


A Tale of Two Churches

by Defnotmeyo



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 03:05:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12902589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defnotmeyo/pseuds/Defnotmeyo
Summary: Don't read either if you're super invested in not going to hell, I guess.





	1. Churches and Misery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first chapter is sad. The second isn't. That's all you need to know.

He’s been out of the game too long. Way too long.

He’s known if for a while; felt it when she took down that shoplifter in Philly. Scully was always an adept fighter in their partnership, but Mulder’s all brawn now and no speed. He’s still got her for that.

And that’s why, when the back door to the Van De Kamps’ house splits open, Mulder knows he’s fucked.

He grabs William around the shoulders and neck, pulls him back, towards the kitchen. The smoker’s henchman lays hot lead into Mr. Van De Kamp’s chest. 

Scully is upstairs, clearing the top floor, and Mulder and Scully have officially committed the first offense of tactical procedures. You never… ever… leave your partner.

Those lines blur a little when it concerns your kid.

“Get back, mother fucker!” Mulder shouts as he continues to pull his son.

William’s adoptive mother hangs in the balance. She’s caught. Between a gun and a rapidly dying husband. William is trying to pull out from under Mulder’s arm, but Mulder has pounds, experience, and years on his kid.

“You’re not gonna lay a hand on this kid, you mother fucker.”

Mulder can see Scully’s boots. She’s creeping down the stairs. She’s fox-quiet, and manages to make it to the landing. Mulder refuses to even shift his gaze. He’s not going to give her away.  
It happens at once. 

The henchman grins, empty jackal expression. “I’m going to die anyway, you bastard, without Spender’s vaccine. You think I give a shit about this chick?” His gun is centered on William’s adoptive mother.

Before Mulder can think, his son has elbowed him and gotten away, headed for the only mother he knows, and there is a pop as the trigger on the muscleman’s gun is pulled. 

Mulder can’t even scream. He has no time. No time to scream at her. No time to tell her to stop.

He shoots twice. Drops Spender’s man. But for the rest of his days, he will see the flash of her hair as she drove in front of the bullet headed for William’s mother… William’s mother… in name only. Scully gave him life.

Mulder finds his voice. “God dammit Scully! No no no. No. No fucking no. No.” 

He’s on top of her and it’s bad. The bullet took her right through her brachial artery. He knows this because he slept with a doctor for twenty years. He knows the human body. 

“No. No. Fucking. Fuck. No. William, get a fucking… fuck.”

Will is a sharp kid. He’s already hauled ass and grabbed a sheet and a belt. “Tourniquet, Mulder, we need a tourniquet.”

“She’s not gonna have a fucking arm if we put on a tourniquet, William.”

The kid is frantic. He’s known these people for two weeks. His father… his adoptive father… is dead, on the floor behind them. His mother is screaming. This man, this fucking guy who has told him an unbelievable story, is talking to him. William doesn’t care. 

“Just cinch the belt, Mulder!”

Mulder never cinches the belt. And she’s gone. There on the floor of a house William would never call home, again.

For the rest of his days, William knows, he will never hear a human howl. But the sound Mulder makes, when her chest doesn’t rise, is a sound William will carry with him, until the day he, himself, dies.

For Mulder’s part… He tries not to hate the kid. Or Mrs. Van De Kamp. They hold on to him through the coroner. Through the funeral. Through the burial. He’s not used to people holding him. And to be honest, every time they try to comfort him, he feels a  
slow hatred build.

This kid, William… he cost him everything. Everything.

Mulder goes back to the church they held her service in. For three weeks, he goes back. Every single day. It’s the last place he got to see her. And he will stand watch.

He saw once, on Reddit, a dog who supposedly came back to its owner’s grave. Day after day. 

Mulder supposes he’s doing that now. Coming back to where he thinks he feels Scully, can almost smell her, in this place of worship. 

As he’s done every other day, he slumps into a pew. And he buries his face. And he cries.

Different from every other day. Today… Mulder brought his gun. 

Before he can even pull it from the holster, the front door of the church creaks open. 

“Mulder?” 

William is… it turns out… a persistent fucking kid. And he will force himself into any conversation or situation. Much like his mother, it turns out.

“Hey uh…” the kid licks his lips, bites the bottom one, and turns away. Shy. Shy as all hell.

Mulder is struck then. Because he’s not had many feelings towards Will at this point, since they met. But Mulder is almost left gasping, because when this kid…

When this man…

Turns his face, Mulder sees the same outline of his jaw. Mulder feels gut punched. 

This kid… shit… he looks exactly like him.

“You come out here every day.” Well, blunt always was her strong suit.

“I… I can’t… William I can’t talk about this.”

The kid nods. “Fair enough. Um… Can I… Can I ask you a question? And… and look, I don’t want to piss you off or make you sad or-“

Mulder chuckles. It’s his first laugh since she died. “Go ahead.”

“She uh… she was kind of………….. She was kind of fucking badass, wasn’t she?”

Mulder’s smile dissolves back into tears and he closes his hands over his face. “Yeah,” he says, through his hands. “Yeah she kind of was.”

William is on him in an instant, next to him in the pew, an arm around him. He doesn’t know this man, but he’s been looking for him. Looking for forever. And it’s then, stroking up and down this man’s back, in a gesture he’s seen his mom use on his own now-buried-father, that he feels it.

“Mulder…”

A sniff. “Yeah.”

“You brought your gun to a church.”

“Yeah.”

William is silent for a minute. Two. Ten. He knows what he has to say. He knows what he needs to do, to make sure he keeps this from turning even more nightmarish.

Ten minutes later, he says it.

“Dad… I’m not leaving until you give me that gun.”

Mulder breaks fully then. Sobbing into his son. His son, that, he lost the love of his life to. His son, who, Mulder could face it, would be better off without Mulder being in his life. His son who…

His son.

Mulder, exhausted, turns away from Will. Hands out, in prayer and penance.

William grabs the gun from the small of Mulder’s back. Tosses it to the side.

For Mulder, the world looks different, without Scully. But not that much different. Not with his son’s ice blue eyes refusing to accept his shit. 

Mulder can make it. One day at a time.


	2. Anointment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If this had gone the other way.

He feels her come up, hears her sit in the pew behind him. They’ve both needed the chance to catch their breath. Someone should have thought to tell them, he thinks, that firefights in your mid-fifties kind of suck.

The church has a low hang of smoke, still, which has failed to clear. It will be hours before forensics can get here. Mulder and Scully, true to themselves, obviously don’t give one shake of a rat’s ass about fucking up the scene of the crime.

“You’re going back in there?” she’d asked.

He’d shrugged without turning. “Everyone’s dead, Scully. We brought pistols to a rifle fight and won… I don’t think anyone’s going to challenge us on that.”

And it’s true. They were severally out-armed. 

But there are two people Mulder knows for whom Scully’s shot will always ring true. One of them is now sitting here in this front pew, with a bullet scar in his shoulder… The other is a young man currently back home, packing two suitcases for a trip to D.C., to   
become the test subject for the vaccine for the coming plague. 

Turns out, they got lucky. William doesn’t require the same burden of proof his mother does, and instead will rush blindly into the unknown.

Mulder’s gonna have to tell him to stop doing that, someday.

But today, today Mulder is sitting there, brass casings scattered around his feet, and he can feel her gravitational pull as certain as the moon and the tide, when she sits down.

“All this time, Mulder… I’m not mad. But all this time, you knew.”

He shakes his head, doesn’t turn. “No, I had an idea.”

“And you didn’t-you never came for him.”

“You wanted him to live a normal life, Scully.”

The silence in the church is heavy. He doesn’t startle, when he feels her arms tug him back. He’s had twenty years to get used to her desperate chokeholds. 

“I’m so sorry, Mulder. For-“

“Stop.” Now he shifts his hips, finally, to look at her. “You don’t have to be sorry for anything. Scully, this one thing, the one thing I never told you… it… it tore us apart. But that’s on me. You did it, Scully. You saved him.”

She takes a breath in and buries her face in his neck. The gravitas can’t keep his small smile back. She’s going to have road rash all over her face tonight, from the stubble he’s sporting.

“He got to be a little boy, Scully.” She nips at his neck and his voice falters, but he keeps going. “He got to grow up. His mom’s a veterinarian for fuck’s sake-“ the next nip comes at his jaw – “His dad wants to help us re-fi the house… I mean jesus,”…. When Mulder says jesus, it’s always lower case. It’s a comma, for a gasp. Today, in this conversation, with her tugging down on his earlobe… it’s both. “jesus, Scully.”

Mulder, Fox Mulder who hasn’t been laid in over two years, has also forgotten one more golden rule. Nothing gets him laid quicker than getting shot at and managing to live through it. Nothing.

Twice, on the run, they’d taken pot shots at him. And twice, he’d been laid within twenty minutes of safety. Once, in a Ford Taurus in the back of a fried chicken parking lot. And once, and he couldn’t believe this one, in the parking lot of a church. 

There is no way… in hell… she would even be considering… 

Scully is up, over the pew, straddling his lap and sucking his face in the span of that thought. 

Mulder sighs in her mouth as his arms come up. ‘Huh… I guess she’s considering it.’

He grinds himself up against her pussy, and thanks God (he supposes, they are in a Catholic church after all) that he didn’t jack off yesterday. Because his 57-year-old dick is more than happy to jump to the ready today.

She groans and grinds him and he knows, he fucking knows she’s using the front of his pants and the seam of her zipper to rub back and forth on her clit. He knows that circular grind. He’s got a fucking doctoral degree in the grind of Dana Scully’s hips.

It’s funny. In these situations. He’s always tried to be the rational one. He’s never wanted her to regret one single day of sex with Fox Mulder. “Scully-“

“Shut up,” wet smacking. God she’s gonna tear his lip off.

“No, Scully, I don’t think you-“

“You’re wrong.” She might tear his hair out, while she’s at it. Her hand is down their bellies and ripping his belt off.

They are in the very wide open in a very sacred space and his erection is very out in the open and she is very much pumping him. 

“Scully, we’re in the front pew.”

“Two years, and that’s what you’re worried about?”

That’s enough to shut him up and finally get to work. Real work. Because his hips have been doing subconscious work for the past minute. His hands finally take command. He works her button and zipper, and her nipple, at the same time. Counter motion.   
She falls forward, groaning into his neck. Jesus, she really is going to have stubble burn all over her face.

He could get her pants down if their hips would just… stop… grinding.

“Raise up for me,” his breath is hot in her ear. “C’mon, baby, just raise up for me.”

She moans but complies, lets him swing her boot, pants, and underwear off her left leg. 

He cups her, squeezes the promised land and sighs, bowing his head into her chest. He drags his middle and ring finger across her, goes to finger her…

Scully. Is hot and bothered. And bone dry. 

“Uhm…”

They both flag for a moment and she sits on his hips, forehead in the crook of his neck. 

“It’s not…”

He’s got both arms around her, both are gasping. 

“I don’t get wet as easy.”

She hasn’t looked at him and he has a moment of horror. Oh God. She’s… she’s embarrassed. He can’t help his relieved giggle as his head falls to the side, resting against hers. 

“Yeah? And I don’t get hard every time I hear you spout scientific jargon anymore, either, Scully. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

“Mulder…”

“Look.” He’s nuzzling her neck now, in that lost puppy kind of way he knows gets her going, “there are two answers to this. One’s gonna take some time… and one answer is immediate.”

When he says immediate, he snugs her hips to his and grinds her. They answer each other’s moans. 

“I’m uh… ah…” she can’t talk when he’s thrusting against her like that, his dick like a flag pole poking up between them. He’s got his shaft glued to her clit. “I think I’m going to need the immediate.” She might not be wet but god damn she is red hot and she   
needs to come. Now. 

Mulder grins against her, knows she can feel it. He’s got two levels of grin. Gentle and mischievous. This is the latter. He slips a hand in his jacket pocket and pulls it out. 

“Mulder… no.” Scully has stopped grinding.

He huffs a laugh. This is the most fun he’s had in years. “Scully… yes.” He’s already got the bottle open, pouring the oil over his hand.

“Mulder. No.”

He pulls back his face and watches her expression, as he slides his middle and ring finger across and into her. One wrong look from her, and he’ll stop. “Scully. Yes.”

“This is,” she groans, her face falling back into his shoulder. “Mulder, this is wrong.”

“Uh huh.” He speeds his fingers up, just a bit. He’s not into jackhammering her pussy, but he knows she likes it hard. 

“Mulder,” she moans one more time. “The… uh… The anointing oil is-“ he leaves his fingers in her, knuckle deep, and swipes his thumb across her now-soaked clit- “It’s not for the common body, Mulder.”

“Uh huh. You’re not a common body.” And she’s not. She is his holy land. “You ready for me?”

“Now.”

He doesn’t waste time. He sinks her, balls deeps. “Oh, my fucking God!” he shouts, and she rides him there, on the front pew. 

Mulder has the ridiculous urge, for a minute, to raise his hand to Jesus, to cover the statue’s eyes. 

The urge doesn’t last, because in two more strokes, his balls clamp up, and he sends a quick shout out to Scully’s Catholic God, because he can feel her clamp down on him.

She collapses on him, and he feels himself pour out of her and across his lap. They are cheek to cheek and gasping. 

“Mulder.”

“Huh.”

“We just… we just fucked with anointing oil.” 

He chuckles. Kisses her neck. “I’d rather phrase it that we just made holy love, but yeah. We did.”

They are a mess. Sweat and cum between them and quickly sticking together. Crime Scene is going to find a lot more than bullet casings, when they finally get there.

“We gotta get cleaned up.” She’s the pragmatist.

“Want me to go get the holy water?” 

That earns him a light smack to the face as she dismounts. Begins dressing herself. 

He sighs, fat and happy, buttons his pants. It’s wet and it’s sloppy, but he doesn’t care. They won this one. Downed the bad guys. Saved their son. He got laid.

His story hasn’t ended the way he necessarily wanted it to. But Mulder realizes now. You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you find, you get what you need.

They leave the church together, and go pick up their son.


End file.
